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  #1  
04-08-2014, 11:11 PM
rdkcreative rdkcreative is offline
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First off thanks for the great information in this forum. You've helped me a lot in sifting through the crappy hosts.

I currently host a handful of my web design clients and have a reseller account with the guys over at BigScoots. They're really great in terms of support and overall site performance but as I take on more clients I want to move to something a little more powerful. I liked what you were talking about in another thread about having a supercharged reseller host which I think is a managed no-root access vps host. It seems like the next step for me would be to pick one of the companies on your recommended vps list.

My question to you is how do I know how much RAM I should get? I'm trying to resist the urge to get as much as possible but how do I know where the threshold of performance meets ridiculousness?

And what are your thoughts on Litespeed?

Thanks in advance for your input.
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  #2  
04-09-2014, 01:21 AM
Impulse Impulse is offline
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Some of the more experienced people like Kpmedia can chime in but as an Average Joe i can tell you this.

First I am with Big Scoots as a VPS customer...If you are already happy with them, why not check out their VPS and see what you can get with them? I've been with them off and on since 2013(Curiosity always has me wanting to go try something new and then i always wind up back with Big Scoots since i have always been treated well by then. Awesome guys, as I am sure you are aware of).

I can also recommend Veerotech(which Kpmedia actually recommended to me) as an amazing company to try as well.

As far as how much ram you need...that's a tough question. I was told when I first looked into VPS to start with 1 GB if you plan to use Cpanel. YOur host should be able to work with you and go from whatever plan higher or lower you need to(Big Scoots is good for this).

Litespeed for me has done wonders. I've seen my site when it is without litespeed and i've seen my site when it is with litespeed and it is much faster with load times. I briefly switched to Site5 back in February(They are a host Kpmedia recommends for that supercharged reseller type of VPS but for me I did not like them because in the off chance you want to do more with your VPS, you really can't because it is not a vps so much as a reseller account and i wanted to have the option to at least do more) and without litespeed, my site was noticeably slower so between that and some issues with support i went back to a host that offers litespeed. So out of personal experience i do recommend it. I believe Big Scoots utilizes it on their reseller accounts so you're likely already experiencing it.

If you're looking for recommended hosts I can recommend
1. Big Scoots(Currently)
2. Veerotech(Previously...I am doing a review on them after i post here)

^those are my top 2
Wiredtree, Knownhost and Futurehosting are well recommended hosts on WHT but i amnot overly fond of them personally. I am sure Kpmedia and the other experienced people can chime in with more ideas

Quote:
Originally Posted by rdkcreative View Post
First off thanks for the great information in this forum. You've helped me a lot in sifting through the crappy hosts.

I currently host a handful of my web design clients and have a reseller account with the guys over at BigScoots. They're really great in terms of support and overall site performance but as I take on more clients I want to move to something a little more powerful. I liked what you were talking about in another thread about having a supercharged reseller host which I think is a managed no-root access vps host. It seems like the next step for me would be to pick one of the companies on your recommended vps list.

My question to you is how do I know how much RAM I should get? I'm trying to resist the urge to get as much as possible but how do I know where the threshold of performance meets ridiculousness?

And what are your thoughts on Litespeed?

Thanks in advance for your input.
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  #3  
04-09-2014, 03:46 PM
rdkcreative rdkcreative is offline
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@Impulse - thanks for your input. I really do like the support I get over at BigScoots. Being a smaller company they tend to go above and beyond.

@Kpmedia - BigScoots never made any of the top 10 lists. What are your thoughts on their VPS offering? What are your thoughts on RAM in general especially as it relates to WP sites?
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  #4  
04-12-2014, 02:11 PM
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kpmedia kpmedia is offline
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The Big Scoots topic was moved here: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-...bigscoots.html. This thread was getting too far off-topic. Back to topic...

Quote:
Originally Posted by rdkcreative View Post
First off thanks for the great information in this forum. You've helped me a lot in sifting through the crappy hosts.
Glad to hear it.

Quote:
I currently host a handful of my web design clients and have a reseller account with the guys over at BigScoots. They're really great in terms of support and overall site performance but as I take on more clients I want to move to something a little more powerful. I liked what you were talking about in another thread about having a supercharged reseller host which I think is a managed no-root access vps host. It seems like the next step for me would be to pick one of the companies on your recommended vps list.
You're referring to the managed VPS from Namecheap and Site5. Those two hosts have a somewhat unique VPS offering, in that you don't get root access. Or another way to look at it: you don't have to mess with root access! The handle everything for you. Both are excellent hosts.

In terms of support speed, Site5 edges out Namecheap right now -- and my main VPS is with Namecheap, so I hope that changes again! Keep that in mind if you want lots of upfront management done (add server-side caching, etc).

Quote:
My question to you is how do I know how much RAM I should get? I'm trying to resist the urge to get as much as possible but how do I know where the threshold of performance meets ridiculousness?
You have to look at it in terms of a VPS using cPanel.

cPanel has a 512mb minimum requirement and a 1gb suggested according to http://cpanel.net/cpanel-whm/system-requirements.
But in reality, 768mb to 1gb is honestly the minimum, and 2gb is the suggested, when you load it down with sites.

Questions for you:

- How many sites do you have?
- What are the sites based on? (Plain HTML, WordPress, Joomla, etc?)
- What sort of realistic growth do you project in 6 and 12 months?
- If CMS are used, are they cached in-app with plugins? Will you also want to use server caching? (It's a good idea!)

Sometimes the minimum is fine, 2gb is better, and sometimes you'll need more. Give me tha

Quote:
And what are your thoughts on Litespeed?
My thought it that it's too expensive if you're not a shared hosting provider.

I'm also not convinced that it's any better/faster that using Apache with nginx or Varnish. The Varnish/nginx cPanel plugin from Unixy has a $6/monthly cost (billed quarterly), and is a much better buy. If I were to buy anything (and I do!), I'd much rather get that.

If any of those client sites are potentially resources-hungry, CloudLinux is also a good investment at $12/monthly from LicensePal.

It's not just the webserver (Apache vs. LiteSpeed), but the other services -- PHP (caching), MySQL (tuning), etc. Sometimes optimizing the other services has a far more useful effect. For example, I'm using a server with:

- Apache 2.4 reverse proxied with nginx
- Varnish cache (http cache)
- the new CloudLinux cache (file cache)
- xcache (PHP cache)
- periodic MySQL tuning

And it runs quite good! Very, very fast for our dev clients.

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  #5  
04-18-2014, 03:09 PM
rdkcreative rdkcreative is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post
Questions for you:

- How many sites do you have?
- What are the sites based on? (Plain HTML, WordPress, Joomla, etc?)
- What sort of realistic growth do you project in 6 and 12 months?
- If CMS are used, are they cached in-app with plugins? Will you also want to use server caching? (It's a good idea!)
I'm currently hosting about 20 sites and all save 3 are WP sites (and those 3 are slated to switch over soon). In the next year I'll probably add about 10-20 more sites (some of which might be affiliate sites).

Caching is something I'm still researching. I know I need to do it but I just don't know exactly how yet and which way is the best way to go. Be on the lookout for another post on that b/c I would love to pick your brain on the best ways to speed up a WP site.

I'm currently leaning towards the SSD2000 plan over at WiredTree (https://www.wiredtree.com/managedvps/ssdvps.php). They're on the top 10 list and have good rates. I was going to add Litespeed but based on what you're saying I'm going to need to re-think that.

I don't want to get caught up in the Litespeed hype. I'll get it if it's faster but no one has been able to show me a comparison of a WP site with and without Litespeed to see how it responds.
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  #6  
04-18-2014, 04:10 PM
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kpmedia kpmedia is offline
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WiredTree

Yes, WiredTree is a good value.

2gb managed for $55 is quite decent. Five years ago ~$50 would barely get you 512mb!

(Note that WiredTree uses Virtuozzo, but that's probably not an issue if you're just running WordPress sites. Virtuozzo is not true isolation. It's not really "private", as it shares/pools CPU resources. It's 2000s technology. More modern 2010s VPS tech uses Xen, KVM, Hyper-V or VMware.)

And if you use them, use our link if you don't mind: WiredTree.com

2gb RAM enough?

With only 20 (later 30-40) sites, I don't see any reason that 2gb will not work. The only mitigating factors are:
(1) traffic
(2) caching, or lack thereof

How many visitors do the sites (total) get monthly?

SSD

SSD is as overrated as LiteSpeed. More so, actually. Don't let that be a determining factor.

SSD mostly benefits databases, not static files.

For just WordPress sites, it honestly doesn't make a difference unless:
(1) the site traffic is very large -- ie, many MySQL read/writes
(2) it's poorly coded, and thus has lots of resource overhead -- especially MySQL
(3) you're not caching anything, and every call has to hit the databases

Sometimes just optimizing MySQL on the server is all you need. I often think these benchmarks that claim big % jumps are doing so with non-optimized servers.

A good RAID SAS disk array is just as good as an SSD in most situations, and far cheaper. Most all decent VPS hosts use RAIDed SAS HDD.

You don't need to avoid SSD, just don't think you *must* have it. What I always find silly is when Virtuozzo hosts offer it, but the CPU pooling of Vz is more often the server bottleneck and not the I/O.

If you do use SSD, just be sure to backup frequently, especially if the host is not running redundant failover clouds. SSD is far more volatile than HDD, and chances of recovery from an SSD is near zero. (We're about to use Idera CDP5 backups from x10's r1softlicenses.com for daily backups. For a small VPS, it's only $15 monthly.)

In practice, you might get a 10% performance boost from SSD. So a site with page loads of 2s would maybe be 1.8s. Not a big difference.

LiteSpeed

Aside from LiteSpeed itself, I've never seen clear evidence that the webserver is all that.

Yes, it's ideal as an Apache drop-in for shared hosts. It's easy. But for users like us, it's vastly overpriced. Whatever bugs nginx or Varnish introduces (rare!) to our sites can easily be sorted, especially if using a cPanel plugin. LiteSpeed is mostly for shared hosting customers, not VPS/dedicated users.

LiteSpeed also has many drawbacks, one of which is the mod_security compatibility issue.

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  #7  
04-18-2014, 06:00 PM
rdkcreative rdkcreative is offline
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You've given me a lot to think about and if I take Litespeed and SSD off the table I'm not entirely sure WiredTree is the best bet.

KnownHost is running a 15% discount right now. I can put together a cpanel/WHM VPS with them with about 4GB RAM for about $72 and have the datacenter on the east coast which is where just about all my clients are located.

There are so many choices and I don't think any of them are bad choices, just different. At the end of the day I want my client sites responding fast and with as little downtime as possible. What would you do if you were me?
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  #8  
08-23-2014, 11:12 AM
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kpmedia kpmedia is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rdkcreative View Post
What would you do if you were me?
What did you end up deciding on?

Because this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rdkcreative View Post
I liked what you were talking about in another thread about having a supercharged reseller host which I think is a managed no-root access vps host.
... is probably what I'd still suggest. Site5 and Namecheap are the hosts with the no-root (no worry!) managed VPS plans. This assumes they'll install the things you need/want for WordPress specific sites (as per your other thread) -- namely Varnish cache (use the Unixy plugin!), a PHP cache, and the MySQL tuning. mod_security isn't a bad ideae either.

And as always, we've updated our suggested (VPS) host list:


Need a good web host? — Read our 2018 Review of the Best Web Hosts
Quite often, problems with web sites are caused by having a rotten web host. Worse yet, many hosts try to blame you (the customer) for the problems! So dump that lousy company. Say goodbye to slow sites, unresponsive support techs, and downtime. Find yourself a new host today. Whether you need shared, reseller, VPS, semi-dedicated, cloud, or dedicated hosting, something on our list should be a good upgrade for you.


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